Friends are fun, but they bring much more to our lives than just company. In his book, Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, Robin Dunbar explains why, beyond mental health benefits, friends offer longer, healthier lives. (And no, online friends don't count.)
Robin is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford. I spoke with him about why we need friends, how to make them, what the magic number of friends is, and why human touch is the real truth-teller.
Robin Dunbar on friends—the cure for all that ails us